“I don’t understand this,” I said. “Who do I talk to?”
“Who do you want to talk to?”
“I don’t know, Greta! Anyone! I don’t know where to start!”
She looked at her feet and I was ashamed. Her cheeks were pink and mine probably were, too. “I apologize, Greta. I’m just…I’m very afraid.”
“You sound angry.”
“I’m that, too, but mostly afraid.”
“That’s normal,” she said. “You’ll get used to it.”
“No, I don’t think I will. I don’t think anyone should feel like that’s normal.”
“You still sound angry.”
“Not at you.” My rage embarrassed me. I didn’t know it was a useful tool yet. I didn’t know how much rage could get done.
“Greta, when is there a central council or something? I need to talk to the people who organize things.”
She shook her head. “There are the Olders like Old Sam.”
“The toothless one who thought I was dead?”
“Right. Do you want to speak to him?”
“I don’t think so. Who tells people what to do?”
“The Olders give people advice but I wouldn’t say they tell people what to do exactly.”
“But who makes sure things get done?”
“Things that need to be done are done,” she said. “There is what is and there is how things work. The only person I know who gives orders is Phillip.”
“Okay. Sounds like I need to talk to Phillip.”
Greta looked me up and down nervously. “What do you have to trade?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Phillip is the Tradebot.”
“Bot?”
“He’s an android. We aren’t allowed to use that other word around him. You have to be careful. Keep your voice down. We only call him the Tradebot among ourselves but never near the harbor. Down there, his title is Liaison to the City in the Sky.”
I rubbed my face with both hands. “This is….” I had no words. I began to weep again.
I stiffened in surprise as Greta took me in her arms. Such casual intimacy wasn’t the custom of Citizens. I had been embraced by my mother a few times. I dimly remembered my father hugging me once before he disappeared. After that, it had been a long wait and then Carter held me close in many warm embraces. Not enough, of course, but many. Now this girl had simply stepped forward and pulled me close.
“Sh…sh.”
I put my head on her shoulder.
“It’s okay. You’re going to be fine, Elizabeth.”
“I am?”
“Hug me back,” she said. “I don’t have any lice now.”
“What’s lice?”
She smiled and put my head on her shoulder. “You’re like a baby and this is your first day, isn’t it? Sh…sh.”
Greta didn’t say, ‘sorry.’ That was new and nice.
14
After a time, I relaxed into Greta’s arms. She only pulled away when she was sure I was done crying.
“It’s your first day in Low Town,” she said. “What do you want to do?”
As if on cue, my stomach rumbled. “I’m hungry,” I said. “I have to urinate, too.”
“We’ll head down to the shore,” she said. “Or you can pee behind a pillar if you’re in a hurry.”
“Where is the bathroom?”
“Bathroom? You can bathe in the bay,” she said.
“Oh, no,” I said.
“The women usually go down to the water in the morning and the men go down to bathe at night.”
“Who made that rule?” I asked.
“It’s not a rule. It’s just how things work.”
“I see. And what am I going to do for food?”
“We’ll find you some. I’ve been doing some weeding so I’m sure no one will mind. Do you like carrots? It’s mostly root vegetables right now.”
“But how am I going to pay for things? What labor can I offer?”
As tender as she’d been with me moments before, Greta laughed at me then. “You’re from the City.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You will.”
“Tell me.”
“Only Phillip asks to be paid for things. The rest of us share.”
“How does that work?”
“What do you mean?”
“What if someone can’t work? How do they eat?”
“Everybody gets something to eat.”
“But how do you know how much to give everyone?”
“Sorry, Elizabeth. I don’t understand.”
It was as if I’d awoken on an alien planet. “Let’s put it this way: if a worker becomes ill, how many days do they get to recover before they go back to work?”
Greta looked at me strangely. “Wouldn’t that depend on how sick they were? I can’t choose for another how many days they stay sick. If we could choose, no one would ever be sick one day.”
“I was taught that sharing was tried once and it failed,” I said.
“That’s odd.”
“What?”
“Just because something doesn’t work once, you throw it away? Down here, when something’s broken, we fix it. I’ve been shown that this is how it works. Let me show you.” Greta took my hand, gave it a squeeze and led me through the rubble at the base of the City.
Everything I saw seemed alien and bad. Everything was good in its way, too. As a Citizen, I hadn’t known two contradictory things could be true at the same time. There is something about striving together that lifts the spirit.
In the towers’ concourse, I had seen Citizens step over a fallen man. They ignored his cries and let Maintenance sweep him away. Here, people seemed to enjoy giving to each other.
On our way down to the harbor, I saw several people huddle around a woman who had collapsed outside of her tent. It was obvious she was dying. I’d never seen a dying person but, instinctively, I knew.
The woman had no medicine. Greta stopped me and we joined a circle that grew and grew. Silent onlookers seemed to materialize from all directions. They joined hands and bowed their heads in silent witness to the event of one life’s end.
I’d never seen so many people in such a small space and I was eager to move on. I whispered to Greta, “What are we doing?”
“We have to say goodbye.”
“What was her name?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then why — ”
“Doesn’t matter,” Greta said. “She’s one of us. Everyone is one of us.”
I looked up at the City. I didn’t say so, but I knew how wrong Greta was about that.
The Worm turned high above us. I thought about the people on board, behind those dark windows. At that moment, a Citizen might have been looking down on me. Thanks to Vivid, all they would see was dirt and rocks and emptiness. That thought made me angry again. It reminded me of the battle drone’s assertion, and the utter certainty in the machine’s words. Sy Potter said I didn’t matter.
The monorail’s low hum was the music that ushered the woman out of this world and, hopefully, into another. She was the first dead person I ever saw.
They lived in squalor, but as the refugees around me began to sing a sweet lament, I thought how sterile my life had been.
Their voices rose and my spirit, too, was raised. Men and women and children of all races and sizes joined hands and, as they sang a song I didn’t know, they swayed together.
I remember a phrase from the song. It was: she’s closer to the sky now.
Their unity in grief lifted the people of Low Town. As I stared up at the City in the Sky, I allowed myself a grim smile.
There’s something about confronting birth and death that invites prayer, even among non-believers and the uninitiated. As the people of Low Town prayed for the dead stranger, I prayed for the first time.
Carter taught me a forbidden word. He used it when he was talking about the battle drones. I used it then in my
first soft, whispered prayer. The people of Low Town talked about God often but I didn’t know anything about that. Instead, I prayed to the Future. “Give me the strength,” I said, “to bring those fuckers down.”
15
The harbor was an alien landscape. From my enclosed deck, the view beyond the wind turbines was open water. From my new perspective, the harbor was a city of its own. From the pier to the houseboats to the skiffs floating in the shadow of the City in the Sky, I could have walked all the way out to sit at the base of the turbines’ spinning blades.
Far to our left, I saw the container ship run aground as I had always seen it. The expanse between was a seascape of sailing ships rocking gently along a network of wharves. Farther out to sea, more ships stood at their moorings.
“Those ships, far out…are they too big to come in?”
“Some of them,” Greta said. “Most are warships.”
“Warships?”
“Of course.”
“For what?”
“To keep out the pirates, Phillip says.”
“But you don’t believe that?”
“Of course not. If it comes from the City in the Sky, it’s a lie.”
“That’s a useful rhyme,” I said. “So why are they out there?”
“To keep out more refugees. Only the sanctioned traders come to the bay.”
“Where do the rest go?”
Greta shrugged. “They come from villages. They’re turned away. The sailors say they go to villages up and down the coast. There’s even a castle down that way.” She pointed.
“A castle? Really? Like in little Takers’ stories?”
“You mean children’s stories?”
“Yes.”
“But the castle’s real,” she said. “My mother saw it once. It’s called Hearst. A ship that isn’t allowed to come into port here can go there.”
“What do they trade?”
“Oh, many things. The far gathering place by the water has a drum that cleans the water of salt. We had to give up one of our electricians for two months for one of those machines. In return a man comes up from the castle and keeps the drum working right.”
“You have electricians?”
“Oh, yes. Three hours a night the City sends us energy.”
“Why do they do that?”
“That’s part of the bargain that keeps us working for them.”
I watched the ships. Two drones flew overhead side by side but I saw none working along the piers. “Why don’t they use drones to unload the ships?”
Greta covered her mouth and whispered, “The traders refuse to deal with them. The machines are in control here but not up and down the coast. The coast is Gear free.”
“Gear?”
“It’s another word for the machines we use when we’re sure they aren’t around. From here on out, cover your mouth if you have something to say like that. There are cameras everywhere and Old Sam says, even if they can’t hear you, they might read lips.”
“Maybe they can hear us,” I said, “but they don’t think we matter enough to care.”
We walked farther along a boardwalk. An old sign hung over us, faded and weatherbeaten. It read: Fishermans Wharf.
“What do the traders have to trade?”
“Depends on which traders. I like the relic traders. They scavenge the Deadlands for Old World finds.”
“Like what?”
“The City pays well for old computers. One ship got a load of mangoes for a ton of old parts. The mangoes didn’t even go into the City. The ships sat side by side and for every box of old parts that went through the City gate, the captain got a big box of mangoes.”
“Why computer parts? There must be tons of those relics. What good are they now? All the data is dead.”
“There are great rewards for those parts. Rare earth is rare. Old Sam says they’re reclaiming lithium. I don’t know what else. Takes a lot to keep drones working, I guess.”
“Rare earth? What is that?”
“Minerals. Good for drone bones, Old Sam says. A lot of the places it comes from aren’t there anymore. Nuked.”
The Fathers and Mothers had erased inconvenient images. It appeared their censors had also erased so much much vocabulary, I didn’t even know of all the things I didn’t know. “Nuked? And what’s that?”
“Like Germany,” Greta said. “It means it’s not there anymore.”
“Where do they say these places went?”
“Some say the people became shadows painted on crumbling walls. Others believe the people turned to drifts of dust that the wind sifts and takes somewhere far away where there’s no pain.”
“Sounds like little Takers’ stories. Can’t be true.”
“I don’t think so, either, but I know the City used to bring old comm tech in by the ton down the coast. By the shit-ton, my mother says. Lots of little boxes with glass lids the sailors say. There’s a smelter somewhere. The sailors talk about it all the time. The smokestacks burn night and day. They say they burn dinosaurs. You know what those are?”
“More silly stories. Giant lizards. I’ve seen pictures. The Fathers and Mothers say they’re a test. When I was a little girl, a High Father asked me if I believed in the stories of big lizards from a long time ago. He asked if I believed that the lizards were killed by rocks thrown from space. I said I did. My mother said that was what ruined things for me. I might have been a Maker instead of in Service.”
“Service is good,” Greta said. “Everyone’s in service, really.”
“I don’t know if that’s true.”
She smiled. “I know.”
“You’re very sure of yourself for a fifteen-year-old.”
“How old are you, Elizabeth? Really tell me this time.”
“Almost thirty.”
“That’s old,” she said. “Who told you that you shouldn’t be confident?”
That question troubled me so much I didn’t answer. “Greta, what are mangoes?”
“Fruit. They’re really sweet. I’ve had a few. My mother knows people.”
I considered this and searched the air for wafts of monster pollen again. “Greta? Do you know what a peach is?”
“Of course,” she said. “Had one of those, too.”
“The City doesn’t take them?”
“Of course they do.”
“I’ve never had a peach. I wonder where they all go. My mother remembered them from when she was a little girl, but — ”
“Low Town gets a little of every trade that’s allowed through the port.”
“Like with the three hours of energy each night?”
“Yes. The Liaison says it’s to pacify the populace without killing workers.”
“Then how come I’ve never had a peach?”
Greta touched my arm and gave me a friendly squeeze. “How can you be so old and so gullible? They need workers down here to deal with the sailors. That’s why they let you live.”
“Oh.”
“If the City shares,” she said, “it’s not because they care. It’s because they’re scared.”
“Another useful rhyme,” I said. “Someday, I’d like to tell it to the Fathers and Mothers face to face.”
16
As we picked our way along the water’s edge I began to relax. Even at this early hour, many people worked along the piers. Greta told me that when the sun rose high in the sky, if the wind died, everyone would stop to take a nap in the middle of the day.
“Doesn’t the Liaison object?”
“I suppose he used to but we own the docks. They need us.”
“How far do the ships come from?”
“Everywhere that’s left,” Greta said, “but this is the last great city. There is another large community far away that’s sort of like this but they don’t have a City in the Sky. Just a lot of people.”
“Where’s that?”
“East, somewhere. It’s called Shelburne. The sailors say it used to be the third best harbo
r in the world. Now it’s the best. Lots of fish. No dead zones, but too far from here.”
“Dead zones? Like in the Deadlands?”
“Kind of. Dead zones in the water are like Blight on the land.”
“I was told that Blight was everywhere.”
“Well, I’ve had mangoes and peaches so — ”
“I understand,” I said. “The Fathers and Mothers lie from the bottom of their hearts — ”
“And through their faces!” Greta said.
We laughed together. Her laughter was joyful and mine was bitter. I wondered where all the mangoes and peaches went while I was drinking kale shakes. No doubt the High Fathers and High Mothers got first pick of the best cargo. I knew the City was made possible by hoarding resources. I hadn’t suspected that the Fathers and Mothers were keeping resources from Citizens, too.
At the center of the port, a large concrete bunker lay at the feet of the City’s central pillars. Beneath the bunker, the dark maw of a tunnel lay open. Men and women wheeled wooden boxes up to the building where a very tall drone stood. As tall as three men, the silver bot bent its knee joints backwards to lower itself closer to the humans it spoke to. It gestured with both arms, but one arm was missing below the second elbow.
“That’s the gate to the City,” Greta said. “The tall drone is Percival. He checks the cargo. Phillip is in the bunker. He makes the deals.”
“Is it always this busy here?”
“No, not at all. In the winter, we can go days and days without seeing a new ship. When that happens, the energy is held back and there are no shipments for us to take our share from. We grow a lot of root vegetables to make it through the lean times. We have a lot of soup but I like soup, especially if there’s some meat in it.”
“There’s meat?”
“Of course.”
“What kind of meat? Is it all rabbits?” I shuddered.
“Goats, mostly. Rabbit sometimes. Up north there are a lot of deer. They say the fewer people there are, the more venison there is. The people up north are fierce hunters. They eat well. The people down south are strong gatherers. They eat well. Fortunately, we’re in the middle, trading back and forth.”
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